He crossed the house again, to see if any of Mucklewame’s men had arrived.

They had not.  The man with the Lewis gun was lying dead halfway across the street, with his precious weapon on the ground beside him.  Two other men, both wounded, were crawling back whence they came, taking what cover they could from the storm of bullets which whizzed a few inches over their flinching bodies.

Angus hastily semaphored to Mucklewame to hold his men in check for the present.  Then he returned to the other side of the house.

“How many men are serving that gun?” he said to M’Snape.  “Can you see?”

“Only two, sirr, I think.  I cannot see them, but that wee breastwork will not cover more than a couple of men.”

“Mphm,” observed Angus thoughtfully.  “I expect they have been left behind to hold on.  Have you a bomb about you?”

The admirable M’Snape produced from his pocket a Mills grenade, and handed it to his superior.

“Just the one, sirr,” he said.

“Go you,” commanded Angus, his voice rising to a more than usually Highland inflection, “and semaphore to Mucklewame that when he hears the explosion of this”—­he pulled out the safety-pin of the grenade and gripped the grenade itself in his enormous paw—­“followed, probably, by the temporary cessation of the machine-gun, he is to bring his men over here in a bunch, as hard as they can pelt.  Put it as briefly as you can, but make sure he understands.  He has a good signaller with him.  Send Bogle to report when you have finished.  Now repeat what I have said to you....  That’s right.  Carry on!”

M’Snape was gone.  Angus, left alone, pensively restored the safety-pin to the grenade, and laid the grenade upon the ground beside him.  Then he proceeded to write a brief letter in his field message-book.  This he placed in an envelope which he took from his breast pocket.  The envelope was already addressed—­to the Reverend Neil M’Lachlan, The Manse, in a very remote Highland village. (Angus had no mother.) He closed the envelope, initialled it, and buttoned it up in his breast pocket again.  After that he took up his grenade and proceeded to make a further examination of the premises.  Presently he found what he wanted; and by the time Bogle arrived to announce that Sergeant Mucklewame had signalled “message understood,” his arrangements were complete.

“Stay by this small hole in the wall, Bogle,” he said, “and the moment the Lewis gun arrives tell them to mount it here and open fire on the enemy gun.”

He left the room, leaving Bogle alone, to listen to the melancholy rustle of peeling wall-paper within and the steady crackling of bullets without.  But when, peering through the improvised loophole, he next caught sight of his officer, Angus had emerged from the house by the cellar window, and was creeping with infinite caution behind the shelter of what had once been the wall of the estaminet’s back-yard (but was now an uneven bank of bricks, averaging two feet high), in the direction of the German machine-gun.  The gun, oblivious of the danger now threatening its right front, continued to fire steadily and hopefully down the street.